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Charles Frederick Holder (1851-1915) http://tinyurl.com/CHolder

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Life in the Sierra Madre†

From Life in the open; sport with rod, gun, horse, and hound in southern California, 1906. Read Online Download PDF

Reader: Kevin Hearle

The natural beauty of California's Sierra Madre† has the power to stop any of us in our tracks. It can even turn the keenest of hunters away from the chase.

For over twenty years, conservationist Charles Frederick Holder spent his days chasing game in California's Arroyo Seco Canyon. But at night, he pursued a calmer pastime.

I have stood on the high peaks at night and watched the fog come stealing in from the sea, until it spread out an opaline vestment, filling all the valleys with seas of silver, through which the tops of hills and lesser mountains protruded like islands; a sea of marvellous lights and shades....

At other times the full moon rises clear and beautiful, flooding the valleys with silvery light, while the darkness of the cañons is so intensified that they can be traced for miles. The valley becomes a world of shadows, and weird shapes form and re-form, advance and retreat, as the moon rises and floods the land with light.

Charles Frederick Holder's Life in the open; sport with rod, gun, horse, and hound in southern California was published in 1906.

–Contributed by Alicia K. Gonzales.

† Holder may be referring to the San Gabriel Mountains as the Sierra Madre.